


ambulance sirens

by fated_addiction



Category: K-pop, KARA (Band), Winner (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>No one ever tells you how to figure these things out; she just always knew it was going to be that simple. </i> Youngji, maneuvering against the tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ambulance sirens

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a part of [how to write a profile](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4632192/chapters/10562550) and all those tumblr requests, but seeing as I apparently let this one get away from me, it's a stand-alone on its own.
> 
> For the request prompt, 'fake relationships + minho/youngji + pregnancy' and because I'm stupidly obsessed over cop dramas, of course.

It seems like yesterday's coffee is still burned into the roof of her mouth. The thing is -- and there is a _thing_ \-- Youngji has now been up for nine hours with no sleep, consequently, finding her place between one of the paramedics on the open side of Minho's stretcher.

"I can't believe you got shot," she says, and her hands are shaking. Her palms are cut up. She'll need stitches.

"Fuck you," he says, peeling off his oxygen mask. His eyes are hazy. The paramedic glares at her. But coping mechanisms, you know.

"Seulgi is going to kill me," she tells him. His gaze softens. Maybe it's the drugs. "I'm supposed to meet her boyfriend today and -- it's a really big deal, Youngji-yah. I'm going to murder you into itty-bitty bits, Youngji-yah."

Minho laughs, then he winces. The paramedic at her side elbows her at the knee.

"I won't let her," Minho breathes. It's all very valiant, of course, until the sirens over them seem to start screeching.

Youngji reaches forward, grabs his hand and laces their fingers together. She winces slightly. His skin rubs over her cut and she tries to breathe through her teeth.

"That's nice," she manages. "You do owe me," she says too.

Minho flips her the finger.

They've been partners for six months.

 

 

 

 

Academy life isn't important. It's like remembering the color of the shoes you wore on your first day to nursery school (green) or the fact that everyone remembers that you had a girlfriend in first grade and she was pretty (minho _totally_ did) because those memories are meant for nothing more than those random, strange occasions that your mother brings up (she does) at dinner.

But they have a picture, for proof, of the two of them in their dress blues and _not_ standing together stiffly, like everyone else, his arm around her shoulders and her fist into his side. They're smiling. Well, it's more like he's smiling -- that big, wide stupid grin of his that Seungyoon warned her about. She's a little more reserved, shy even, but her smile is there too. 

No one ever tells you how to figure these things out; she just always knew it was going to be that simple. 

Minho will always be the one that will comes first.

 

 

 

 

There is an apple on her desk when she gets to work.

She eyes it dubiously, under her sunglasses, picks it up too and weighs it against her palms. She turns, just slightly, and watches as Taehyun scurries away, flashing an uneasy grin in her direction. It could only mean one thing: Minho has done something stupid and she's going to have to either kill him, kill him, or probably cover for him and _then_ kill him.

"What did you do," she says, not ask, and barely turns too -- he's behind her, probably grinning, and she hears that soft, stupid laugh.

"Nothing," he answers, dropping around her. "I didn't fucking do anything."

"Good." Her glasses slip down her nose. "Because it's really too early for a headache, oppa."

He pokes her forehead. She kicks at his shins, but misses and he laughs. 

"It's nice to know that you believe in me."

Her eyes narrow. "You're not a thirteen year old girl, so don't even try throwing that at me."

His lashes flutter and she feels her heart launch itself into her throat. His fingers poke at her side as he passes again and she's moving backwards, leaning against her desk as he hands her a file.

"We have a case," he says.

She sighs. "Of course," she says and glances to the front, to the double doors that say _homicide_ and remembers it was her sister that became the singer, but that's life.

He takes her hands and opens them. The scars on her palms are thin lines and ghosts as he drops the file over them. Five bodies, she reads, and it's a serial.

"Well," she murmurs. He hands her his coffee too and she takes a sip, her nose wrinkling at how stupidly sweet it is. She takes another sip and shakes her head. "Guess I have to cancel my date tonight."

"Good," he says, and she doesn't hate him for it.

 

 

 

 

There are boyfriends and girlfriends between them. He has met her sister twice, her mother every other day because he goes to her coffee shop to get _his_ coffee, and she's had a permanent seat in his monthly family dinners for as long as she can remember, since graduation at the very least.

After sixth body, she's going to lose it. They're in a warehouse and the windows are shattered. It took seventeen hours and three days to find this body, half covered by broken glass and ripped up piece of tarp. She even leaves the crime scene for some air even as there's Minho behind her, saying _it's the kids, man, it's the kids_ because he knows her well enough to give her space in time.

Ten minutes later, he's behind her.

"Hey."

Her eyes are closed. Youngji's fingers flex and curl.

"Do you know why I became a cop?" she asks because this is the question everyone asks eventually -- to themselves, to each other, to their own families.

"Your dad, right?" he says and she is not surprised. He comes and stands by her side. Their hands brush. "He was a cop too. A good one, if I remember right..."

"My mom told you."

She looks up and he smiles, shrugging.

"Yeah."

She studies the way his mouth relaxes, the dimples that press into the corners of his mouth too. It's all there, she tells herself. He's just as real as what's inside.

"I hate kids," she murmurs. Her hands rise and press into her forehead. She rubs slow circles into her skin and then his arm is around her shoulders as he pulls her in. "I hate that I have to hate them," her voice is muffled into his shoulder. "Otherwise, I can't go back inside and do my job."

His mouth is in her hair and she feels him sigh.

"I'm right there with you," he says.

It takes a month for them to solve this case, the riddles that come with it, and a lineup of bodies that she will never forget.

Youngji spends a lot of nights in his bed. Eventually, she moves to sleep with him on the couch too.

Minho never says a word.

 

 

 

 

The rain crashes into the window the fourth night they are undercover as a married couple. 

Before they left for Tokyo, she called Seulgi and said, quite simply, "I'm _fucked_." Her best friend laughed for hours, then sighed, and laughed again because it was maybe a little too clear how tangled Song Minho is in her life. 

"You're in love with him," Seulgi says gently -- or as gently as she could. "I'm surprised it took you this long."

But she can't carry that into Tokyo with her (she does) and they are three days into this, waiting for their buyer to show face so they can arrest them and head back home so she can sleep through her vacation.

They have a tiny apartment though. They have too much downtown and Minho has been monopolizing the television as she's been trying to read her magazine for the third or fourth time, but she can't and she's losing it, really losing it, because there's nothing to occupy her mind and she can't go over the case files again.

"Let's not sign up for this again," she half-blurts and Minho turns to her, laughing. "I'm not a believable pregnant woman," she says too, jerking her fingers down, towards her fake belly because they are all sure that they're being watched too.

Minho scoffs. "You'd be surprised --" and then he ducks, when she hits him in the face with a pillow from behind her.

"Anyways. I miss my bed."

He laughs, eyeing her. "I miss your bed --" she hits him again with the pillow and he laughs harder, holding his hands up in surrender.

"Finish that sentence," she dares.

"It's true though."

Her eyes narrow and he's staring at the pillow in her hand. They are thinking of the same time.

"It wasn't my fault," he insists. "I was drunk and Jinwoo --"

"Jinwoo bought me new sheets."

Minho scoffs, glaring. "He better not have. He likes _pink_ ," he says like it's obvious and she's almost amused, still ready to smack him in the face with the pillow.

"He did," she says. "And they were green. Because I like green. And it was really thoughtful since, you know, you were the one that puked all over the --"

He grabs her by the shoulders, propelling the pillow out of her fists. It flies out of her hands and onto the coffee table, knowing over the vase with the fake flowers because undercover work does have a budget.

She's laughing though because it's a stupid memory and his hand is on her side, then over her pillow even though the fake stomach is so _not_ there and then suddenly, he's just cupping the side of her face.

A matter of ten years come to light, nine of them their partnership and one fuzzy year of school. He looks at her and she can't look away, watching his eyes dilate and his mouth fold into half a smile, half a snarl as if he were trying to keep himself from going and saying something totally stupid. 

Youngji leans foward first, presses her mouth to the corner of his, and exhales. He makes a sounds then, low, somewhere in the back of his throat, as if he expected this to happen. His fingers come up to the back her neck, curling into the hair under her ponytail and it's then, suddenly, that she realizes he's adjusted and his mouth is slanted over hers.

It's a kiss, it's not _the_ kiss, but it's earth-shattering and it's complicated. His mouth already feels like it knows hers; tongue to tongue, swallowing each breath she tries to take. He pulls her closer and her legs fold into her lap, over his thighs and she is suddenly on her knees.

When one of them leans back, she realizes that she's breathing heavily and his fingers are tangled in her hair.

"I have a marriage meeting when we get back," he tells her, watching, waiting, and so she goes and she pulls back.

Her lips are dry. Her tongue presses against her teeth and she thinks to herself _i should sleep_ because tomorrow is another long day. She feels dizzy. Youngji still doesn't say anything though.

She just gets up from the couch, goes to the bathroom and locks the door.

 

 

 

 

"I need a boyfriend," she declares, the next time she has coffee with Seulgi, which, by the way, happens to be in the hospital cafeteria where the coffee taste like dirt.

But neither of them have the energy to go somewhere else, especially since Seulgi is in the middle of her _third_ breakup with with Jaebum, has even considered moving out (she won't), and has already told her that if she were into girls, she would totally go and steal Hara from her boyfriend because he's an _ass_ and she totally can.

"You don't need anything," her best friend says. They are sitting next to each other a table. Seulgi puts another sugar packet in her coffee and hits the edge of the table, shaking the legs. "Minho would probably murder him."

"Probably," she agrees, mostly out of habit. Then stops. "He had a marriage meeting."

Seulgi whistles and then drinks her coffee. She shakes her head and Youngji sighs.

"Are you okay?" Seulgi told her once that she only tolerated Minho because she was the most important person in Youngji's life and as a rule, like most things childhood best friend do, he was going to have to be the one that gets that free pass in a lot of things.

"Yes." Then Youngji stops lying. "No," she says. She shrugs and sips her coffee. There's a sour taste. "No," she says again, stronger. "I don't know. I kind of just want to hit him in the face."

"They send you to therapy for those kinds of things," Seulgi muses wisely. The corners of her mouth turn. "Or assign you elsewhere. And you may be okay, but he'd probably --"

"Murder Jinwoo and ..." she trails off, sighing. You're stuck, she thinks. Just stuck.

She puts her coffee down. She looks around the hospital and thinks, rather bleakly, that this isn't the place that she wants to have these kinds of revelations in. It shouldn't happen this way. There should be flowers and sunshine and _yah youngji-ah fucking turn off the drama_ because that feels more possible than anything else. Instead, she's looking around at the white walls, the empty chairs, and wondering why she couldn't say anything to him when he told her.

"I'm terrified," she admits, out loud.

Seulgi reaches for her hand. She pats her knuckles gently with her own.

"Most people," her best friend says. "You might just have to kick him in the face."

This is also true.

 

 

 

 

He shows up to her apartment.

There are about a billion factors that lead up to this, including Tokyo, more than Tokyo, but _mostly_ Tokyo and the fact that he has now gone out on his eighth marriage meeting, she had a close encounter on the job today, and she is pretty sure Taehyun has a huge mouth because otherwise, all of this would have been just another conversation as an afterthought.

"What," she says, greeting him at the door. His tie is skewed and he looks ridiculously uncomfortable. Youngji doesn't invite him in, but leans against the frame of her door. "It's late," she says. "And I'm tired."

"Taehyun called me."

Her eyes narrow and he looks back at her, just as angrily, if not more.

"You had things to do," she pushes back.

"You were _fucking_ shot at."

She shakes her head. Her hair drops into her eyes and she crosses her arms against her chest as if it were going to go and make her a little taller against the argument they are going to go and have.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says weakly.

"Oh fuck that," he snaps.

She meets his gaze this way and there is something so completely terrifying about the way he looks at her, it _hurts_. Her heart is back in her throat and she is starting to shake because yeah, okay, she was shot at today, there was glass that broke over her head, and her ears are still ringing even though she tried to watch a Disney movie to calm her down.

He doesn't grab her. Instead, he simply steps forward and frames her face between his hands. Her eyes burn and she just doesn't have the energy to push him away.

"You went on another meeting," she says. Her voice cracks. Her fingers curl around his tie too and she yanks. Hard.

"I did," he says. He doesn't lie to her. Minho knows he's a terrible liar anyway, the kind that doesn't get away with saying his favorite color is blue when it's some weird, off version of red. "It was the last one," he says too.

Youngji hits his chest.

"I don't want to get married," he tells her.

She hits his chest again.

"I can't love someone that isn't you," he says and she moves to hit him again, but he catches her hand, keeping the other against her face. He looks small and awkward and completely unlike the Song Minho that she's known, will continue knowing for years.

She's shaking. He kisses her knuckles.

"I'm not going to make excuses." Minho's mouth brushes over her nose. "Because there aren't any and I'm so fucking terrible at this, you know, because I don't know how to say anything beyond that. So I'll tell you again --"

Youngji is tired and about ready to burst. Her head is swimming. _I can't love someone that isn't you_. Song Minho isn't romantic, but he's honest and this, now, is really the scariest thing she's ever come face to face.

"Shut up," she says, and kisses him right there.

She kisses him because she needs to kiss him, pulls him into the frame of the door with her, ignoring the pain in her hip as they knock into it together. He tastes tart, like wine, smells too expensive and it's weird, maybe a little too weird, so that she's suddenly kissing him so that she can get that off of him and just be Minho again. 

He bites at her lip, laughing. "I had a speech," he tells her and she swallows when he breathes, pushing her tongue against his teeth. "Yah -- it _was_ good."

"You're still talking," she mutters, her hands sliding under his jacket as they fall back, inside her apartment. Her mouth meets his again and she can't even begin to wrap her head around what is really happening. "And take off your shoes, you idiot."

He kicks his shoes off and she trips, into him, steading herself over both of his arms and they're sixteen, suddenly, and the day is leaving her so quickly she feels like she can breathe again. 

Youngji looks up at him, through her lashes, and smiles a little.

"I'm still mad at you," she says. The real words will come at another time. "But I don't want any other big, dumb idiot but you."

Minho breaks away from her to give her one of those big, stupid grins that he favors.

It's only appropriate, you know.


End file.
